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This is missing the forest for the trees. When I donate to http://givewell.org http://givewell.org , I don't care about the relative value they place on arms vs

This is missing the forest for the trees. When I donate to http://givewell.org http://givewell.org , I don't care about the relative value they place on arms vs legs. What I care about is avoiding pseudo-charities. You know, the ones that pop up in exposé articles every now and then where most of the money goes to marketing and admin, a tiny sliver goes to the actual cause, and then a clown car pulls up and unloads 30 people who try to rationalize how this is actually a good thing? I want to avoid those. As long as givewell can somewhat reliably steer my money away from pseudo-charities, as far as I am concerned they are earning their 10%.

timerol 3y ago
> earning their 10% Note that GiveWell only gets 10% of your donation if you explicitly request that they do. https://www.givewell.org/donate/more-information#How_is_GiveWell_supported https://www.givewell.org/donate/more-information#How_is_Give...
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Right. I happily tick the box because I believe in the importance of what they do.
sanderjd 3y ago
If all "effective altruism" ever meant was "avoid giving money to inefficient charities, and we'll help you figure out which ones are which", then it would be an unambiguously positive thing. But, from my perspective, it's like most of the people originally involved in the movement got bored with that, and went all in on all this other stuff, justified by philosophical shenanigans, resulting in not just different but often contradictory conclusions. For instance, lots of wealthy techie types who bought into EA donated heavily (and I think still do) to charities targeting things like risks to far-future humans and life extension. To me, those are also "pseudo-charities". There is no way to evaluate their effectiveness. They could be 100% effective or 0% effective, we won't know for generations or millenia... And - just like all the "pseudo-charities" researched by GiveWell - every dollar that has gone to these organizations with unknowable effectiveness could have instead gone to known-effective charities.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Rich people have been using charity to avoid taxes, rationalize power acquisition, solicit donations for dubious causes, promote blatantly self-serving policy, etc since forever. We agree on classifying those as pseudo-charities, we agree that these things happened under the EA banner, and we agree that this should trigger some self-reflection from anyone who enabled them and rebranding from anyone who didn't. However, I'm still going to do my charity through GiveWell. GiveWell makes many people with dubious pet causes very angry and these people have taken the adjacent scandal as an opportunity to attack the very idea of vetting charity. If someone wants to propose an alternative vetting strategy, I'm all ears, but I don't see the sins of SBF & co as a reason to stop vetting. I just don't. I am of the opinion that we need vetting now more than ever, and whatever we want to call that going forward I plan to support it.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I don't see the sins of SBF & co as a reason to stop vetting. Who's arguing against vetting?
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    100% agree. I just think of GiveWell as a totally different thing than "effective altruism" now, even though it is where I first heard of the concept. (And that predates the SBF scandal by quite a while!) To their credit, they never recommended these "longtermism" initiatives as effective places to direct charitable funds. So I think their credibility as an organization comes out of this intact, despite some of the people originally associated with them coming out looking much worse. But I dunno, maybe they and/or people like us who support them should be doing more to explicitly distance them from the rest of the EA movement.
laserlight 3y ago
> You know, the ones that pop up in exposé articles every now and then where most of the money goes to marketing and admin Yeah, there are even ones that buy manor houses [0]. [0] Effectivealtruism.org purchased a £15M estate for its headquarters in 2021. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33903850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33903850
- henryaj 3y ago
  From https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-left-kidney https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-left-kidney - "conference venues kept ripping them off, having a nice venue of their own would be cheaper in the long run, and after looking at many options, the “castle” was the cheapest". You're anchoring on 'castle'. If it was a boring office building, no-one would care.
  - nl 3y ago
    That quote you use was from a comment on that post, and the full context of that comment is arguing the complete opposite of what you are saying here: > You said: > "Obviously this kind of thing is why everyone hates effective altruists. People got so mad at some British EAs who used donor money to “buy a castle”. I read the Brits’ arguments: they’d been running lots of conferences with policy-makers, researchers, etc; those conferences have gone really well and produced some of the systemic change everyone keeps wanting. But conference venues kept ripping them off, having a nice venue of their own would be cheaper in the long run, and after looking at many options, the “castle” was the cheapest. Their math checked out, and I believe them when they say this was the most effective use for that money. " > I'm curious to see the math for Wytham Abbey. All I ever saw was Owen Cotton Barrett's response when this was brought up over on the forum. The actual cost benefit analysis for paying £15 million wasn't made clear. As one comment pointed out, the reasoning given for purchasing the castle "could have been made virtually verbatim had the cost been £1.5m or £150m." > You might have seen more information than me though. > Owen Cotton-Barretts comment -> https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-cea-buy-wytham-abbey?commentId=u3yJfbm2pes8TFpYX https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/... I think taking this statement ("we were getting ripped off") without any data goes exactly against the while idea of effective altruism.

timerol 3y ago

> earning their 10% Note that GiveWell only gets 10% of your donation if you explicitly request that they do. https://www.givewell.org/donate/more-information#How_is_GiveWell_supported https://www.givewell.org/donate/more-information#How_is_Give...

jjoonathan 3y ago
Right. I happily tick the box because I believe in the importance of what they do.

sanderjd 3y ago

If all "effective altruism" ever meant was "avoid giving money to inefficient charities, and we'll help you figure out which ones are which", then it would be an unambiguously positive thing. But, from my perspective, it's like most of the people originally involved in the movement got bored with that, and went all in on all this other stuff, justified by philosophical shenanigans, resulting in not just different but often contradictory conclusions. For instance, lots of wealthy techie types who bought into EA donated heavily (and I think still do) to charities targeting things like risks to far-future humans and life extension. To me, those are also "pseudo-charities". There is no way to evaluate their effectiveness. They could be 100% effective or 0% effective, we won't know for generations or millenia... And - just like all the "pseudo-charities" researched by GiveWell - every dollar that has gone to these organizations with unknowable effectiveness could have instead gone to known-effective charities.

jjoonathan 3y ago
Rich people have been using charity to avoid taxes, rationalize power acquisition, solicit donations for dubious causes, promote blatantly self-serving policy, etc since forever. We agree on classifying those as pseudo-charities, we agree that these things happened under the EA banner, and we agree that this should trigger some self-reflection from anyone who enabled them and rebranding from anyone who didn't. However, I'm still going to do my charity through GiveWell. GiveWell makes many people with dubious pet causes very angry and these people have taken the adjacent scandal as an opportunity to attack the very idea of vetting charity. If someone wants to propose an alternative vetting strategy, I'm all ears, but I don't see the sins of SBF & co as a reason to stop vetting. I just don't. I am of the opinion that we need vetting now more than ever, and whatever we want to call that going forward I plan to support it.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I don't see the sins of SBF & co as a reason to stop vetting. Who's arguing against vetting?
- sanderjd 3y ago
  100% agree. I just think of GiveWell as a totally different thing than "effective altruism" now, even though it is where I first heard of the concept. (And that predates the SBF scandal by quite a while!) To their credit, they never recommended these "longtermism" initiatives as effective places to direct charitable funds. So I think their credibility as an organization comes out of this intact, despite some of the people originally associated with them coming out looking much worse. But I dunno, maybe they and/or people like us who support them should be doing more to explicitly distance them from the rest of the EA movement.

laserlight 3y ago

> You know, the ones that pop up in exposé articles every now and then where most of the money goes to marketing and admin Yeah, there are even ones that buy manor houses [0]. [0] Effectivealtruism.org purchased a £15M estate for its headquarters in 2021. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33903850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33903850

henryaj 3y ago
From https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-left-kidney https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-left-kidney - "conference venues kept ripping them off, having a nice venue of their own would be cheaper in the long run, and after looking at many options, the “castle” was the cheapest". You're anchoring on 'castle'. If it was a boring office building, no-one would care.
- nl 3y ago
  That quote you use was from a comment on that post, and the full context of that comment is arguing the complete opposite of what you are saying here: > You said: > "Obviously this kind of thing is why everyone hates effective altruists. People got so mad at some British EAs who used donor money to “buy a castle”. I read the Brits’ arguments: they’d been running lots of conferences with policy-makers, researchers, etc; those conferences have gone really well and produced some of the systemic change everyone keeps wanting. But conference venues kept ripping them off, having a nice venue of their own would be cheaper in the long run, and after looking at many options, the “castle” was the cheapest. Their math checked out, and I believe them when they say this was the most effective use for that money. " > I'm curious to see the math for Wytham Abbey. All I ever saw was Owen Cotton Barrett's response when this was brought up over on the forum. The actual cost benefit analysis for paying £15 million wasn't made clear. As one comment pointed out, the reasoning given for purchasing the castle "could have been made virtually verbatim had the cost been £1.5m or £150m." > You might have seen more information than me though. > Owen Cotton-Barretts comment -> https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-cea-buy-wytham-abbey?commentId=u3yJfbm2pes8TFpYX https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/... I think taking this statement ("we were getting ripped off") without any data goes exactly against the while idea of effective altruism.